Check out a small excerpt from my book. Coming out Apr 26!

Here’s a short excerpt from my upcoming book “Recording Drums: The Complete Guide”. It’s a short section about one of the most abused process in all of recording!

Dynamics Processing

Here’s how I feel about dynamics processing:

Dynamics processing is a good way to keep your levels in check.

Dynamics processing is a powerful tool that can help you create exciting and powerful drum sounds when used properly.

Dynamics processing has become an absolute necessity in modern music.

Dynamics processing is responsible for everything that is bad about the sound of modern music.

There was a time when a compressor/limiter was used to keep peak levels under control so engineers could record to tape at a slightly higher average level without too much concern for excessive tape saturation. It was used as a safety net to keep transients from hitting 0dBfs and ruining an otherwise good take. Or, in extreme circumstances, engineers occasionally set the compressor to “pump and breathe” in time with the music to create aggressive, interesting sounds.

This is not the case anymore.

Although there are still recording engineers who love dynamics and record things with minimal processing, the record-buying public simply wants everything to be loud, all the time. This has been a gradual change but the change is largely due to the way people listen to music in the modern world. Listening to music has become less of an event during the day (as it may have been for us old folks) and more of something that you do while doing something else. Most people listen to music on their iPods as they walk to class or take the subway to work; they may listen on their laptop while they are surfing the web; or they listen in their car as they run errands or go out with their friends.

Certainly, there are still some people who sit down in front of their stereo speakers and listen to a record from top to bottom, but that group is a minority of all listeners. Back when most people purchased their music on vinyl there was no other choice than to listen at home. An LP was not a portable medium. You couldn’t check out your new record on the run; you had to sit down and listen. This is not to say that music was not an accompaniment to other activities way back then, because it was, but it was not used as background music to everyday life like it currently is.

Since more people listen in noisier environments nowadays, extreme dynamics are typically lost on most listeners. What good is a quiet section if the listener perceives it as being the space between songs on the record? People don’t want to strain to hear the quiet parts, especially if they are not in a quiet space at the time. In all honesty, it seems that the average listener wants everything to be at the same level at all times. Most artists naturally want to give their listeners what they want, which has led to compression being used as a matter of routine instead of compression being an audio tool that can fix occasional level problems.

This issue has been magnified by the fact that most people are working in DAWs, using plug-ins instead of hardware compressors. Hardware compressors are expensive, they take up physical space in a rack, and they use electricity and generate heat. They are scarce in all but the high-end recording environments. Plug-ins are comparatively cheap, take up tiny amounts of space on your computer’s hard drive, and the number available is only limited by your CPU power. If you have the processing power and you want to put a compressor (or two) on every track, you can.

And some do.

A record that was made 20 years ago would have used numerous compressors, that is for sure, but not necessarily on every track. The engineer would have looked at what was available in the rack, prioritized the sources that needed compression, and then paired the sources with the appropriate compressor. Or maybe the engineer would have listened first and decided to use only a few on certain sources that actually needed dynamic control! What a concept.

When you set out to make a record nowadays, your mindset must be a bit different. As I mentioned in an earlier chapter, dynamic range has gone by the wayside as of late. Many people blame this on the mastering process but it’s not mastering engineers who want everyone’s record to be louder than the last one. It’s the artists and the labels (when there is a label involved). Volume has become the measure of quality in everyone’s mind so there is push to make each record louder than anything that preceded it.

Although I don’t want to begin a discussion about the politics of dynamics in music, it is worth mentioning because it directly affects the way you must record music from the outset of a project. Knowing that the ultimate goal is to create mixes that can be mastered at excessive levels requires a thoughtful approach to dynamics processing every step of the way.